Security researchers from Kaspersky Lab have identified a spam message campaign on Skype that spreads a piece of malware with Bitcoin mining capabilities.
Bitcoin (BTC) is a decentralized digital currency that has seen a surge in popularity since the beginning of the year and is currently trading at over $130 per unit making it an attractive investment for legitimate currency traders, but also cybercriminals.
BTCs are generated according to a special algorithm on computers using their CPU and GPU resources. This operation is called Bitcoin mining and is usually performed by users who operate multi-GPU computer rigs. However, mining efforts can also be pooled for better results.
Cybercriminals have figured out that distributed Bitcoin mining is a perfect task for botnets and have started developing malware that can abuse the CPUs and GPUs of infected computers to generate Bitcoins.
Source: ComputerWorld
